The European patent publication EP2919562 describes a learning luminaire, a characteristic feature of which is that it can analyze status indications it receives from other luminaires, and adapt its own operation according to identified sequences of status indications that seem to occur with some kind of regularity before the luminaire itself observes the fulfillment of a triggering condition. For example, if a luminaire A observes that a particular other luminaire B often seems to transmit a message essentially telling “my sensor saw movement, I switch lights on” only a short time before luminaire A itself observes movement, it may deduce that walking users tend to appear under luminaire B first and then proceed to the area served by luminaire A. As a consequence, luminaire A may begin reacting to this kind of messages from luminaire B so that it already begins to brighten its own light, thus increasing user comfort because the user perceives the lighting system predicting his movements and lighting up his path ahead of him.
A common problem with learning luminaires of this kind is how to adapt to the varying behavior of users. Making a luminaire learn the most typical patterns is relatively easy in corridors, where users tend to walk along regular routes at regular speeds. However, the spaces served by lighting systems are often much more complicated. They may involve e.g. corridors, office rooms, work stations, storage rooms, and closets (like toilets or small, closed storage spaces), all of which require different kind of lighting.
The task of making learning luminaires adapt optimally to each environment may become difficult particularly if it is required that the system must work with minimal or no initial commissioning or configuring. Preprogramming upon installation can only prepare for assumed characteristics of the usage environment, and consequently in many cases the actually encountered characteristics of the usage environment remain unaccounted for. Furthermore, manual configuration of the luminaire may be a complex or inconvenient task that is prone to misconfiguration—and that is anyway unable to react to any subsequent changes in characteristics of the usage environment.
A prior art document US 2012/091895 discloses a network of lamps in which every lamp is coupled to a presence detector and can receive signals from other lamps in the network. A received signal indicates an activity detected by the presence detector coupled to the lamp that transmits the signal. Every lamp adjusts its light emission depending on the signal received from other lamps and the measurement of its own presence detector.